There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on--a more reliable world in so far as it does not hide that its premise is illusion.

Of course there are times when I hate London, but equally there are times when I can walk 'round a corner and I really feel that this is my place.

When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it.

I can do hieroglyphics in the margin. There are days when I really enjoy the flow of ink. I mean, nice pen, ink straight on to the page.

When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading.

I don't reread my books.

My upbringing was absolutely not the archetypal writer's upbringing. Even, arguably, the opposite.